Civil Society or Democracy ? A Dutch Paradox

Since the 1990s, research has been carried out worldwide into the relationship between ‘civil society’ (an organised, self-aware society) and the formation of democracy. Dutch historians have to date shown little interest in this field of research, although the case of the Netherlands is an interesting one, both historically and in terms of current affairs. This article makes a case for the relevance of Dutch history to the debate on civil society in relation to three points. Firstly, where civil society is a phenomenon of the eighteenth and above all the nineteenth centuries, the society of the Republic demonstrates that a corporatist order can show characteristics of a civil society. Secondly, the factor of religion can be an important element in the promotion of social commitment. Thirdly, Dutch history flags up a paradox: it seems that a highly developed, civil society can rather limit than promote the need for political democracy and the recognition of an independent political sphere.

years the subject has indeed become a research topic among students of urban history. 6 Despite growing international interest, Dutch historians have shown little interest in addressing such questions, however. Contributions by Dutch historians to international projects and volumes on civil society are rare. 7 In some cases, foreign historians have dealt with aspects of civil society in Dutch history. 8 Several explanations can be put forward for this reluctance. Dutch historiography of the modern period has developed without much attention from historians outside of the Netherlands for what had become of a country of little consequence; in marked contrast to the lively interest shown in the age of the Dutch Republic and in colonial history, when the Netherlands was a true international power. Moreover, since the nineteenth century, Dutch culture has been mainly receptive and has made a prudently pragmatic use of models, ideas and movements developed abroad. As a result, modern Dutch history may well be 'interesting and unique in certain ways', but it is still 'very much part of the North-West European mainstream', as an English textbook puts it. 9 Over the past twenty-odd years, Dutch historians have conducted a good deal of research on the culture of sociability or associational life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and on subjects such as middleclass culture, urban history, liberalism, political culture and the formation of modern democracy in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. There has been no focus on civil society, however. A discussion on the merits of the concept has recently started, but historians have been reluctant to adopt the concept as a particularly workable tool with which to interpret and structure  the province of Holland, the rate of urbanization was as high as sixty percent.
Here, even the countryside was directly connected to the urban economy. 21 The Republic was part of the vertical belt of small-scale, commercial, not territorially expansive and non-centralizing city-states, stretching across Europe from the Hanseatic League down to Northern Italy, and occupying a special position in the state formation theories of Rokkan and Wallerstein. 22 The Dutch towns, painstakingly cultivating their positions as city republics, had a high degree of social organization and a good few public venues and spaces facilitating an urban social life and association. 23 This social organization consisted in the first place of corporative or functional bodies, such as craft guilds and urban militia companies (and, mainly in the countryside, district water boards). As craft guilds were reasonably accessible, the Republic numbered thirteen hundred-odd such institutions by 1700.
Guilds and town militias were not voluntary associations but public bodies, which needed the official assent of the town magistrate. Their prime function was to regulate and maintain public order. But apart from being official, regulatory bodies, the guilds and town militias also served as cultural and social institutions through their public ceremonies, festivities and prestigious lodgings. They are interesting in this respect from the perspective of civil society. Guilds and town militias were horizontal, self-governing associations of (lower) middle class citizens, which didn't normally exclude members on grounds of religious differences. They organized the interests of a broad middle class and boosted its solidarity, social confidence and sense of responsibility.
Of a more informal, yet socially basic nature were the neighbourhood associations, in which the local residents arranged their mutual rights, obligations and assistance of their own accord. 24 These were true grass-roots associations, having no need for official consent and electing their own boards.
Local residents committed themselves by signing a set of bye-laws and paying a membership fee. The neighbourhood associations combined mutual aid, social surveillance and sociability, and organized the neighbourhood watches.
Though this type of association gradually lost its autonomy in the second half of the seventeenth century, a strong sense of neighbourhood community appears to have survived until well into the nineteenth century. Furthermore, the cities accommodated an elaborate system of civic poor relief, charitable institutions and welfare endowments, taking care of orphans and the disabled, the elderly and destitute citizens. This abundance of charitable institutions was provided for by the religious communities and their churches, and partly by the municipal authorities. Although Roman Catholics, the dissenting protestant sects and Jews were only tolerated and were officially denied a public role, they were in fact allowed to provide this kind of care for their own communities. In some larger cities, they even maintained quite distinguished buildings to this end. A position within a charitable institution or welfare endowment, be it as a regent or otherwise, conferred social prestige to its holder. To maintain a dense system of charitable institutions was a matter of civic pride and competition, between the cities themselves and between the religious communities within each city.
The fact that the urban communities displayed a considerable degree

The new sociability
Alongside these forms of association, a different type of cultural sociability had emerged; one with a rather private character and that did not serve any public function. Early modern society had known fraternities, brotherhoods and chambers of rhetoric. Research is not conclusive as to the continuity of these forms of association. Some forms may have died out in the course of the seventeenth century, but there is evidence too that musical companies, chambers of rhetoric, brotherhoods, conventicles and other gatherings in a private sphere remained a common feature at this time. 29 This type of sociability arose from private initiative and could survive thanks to the space the public authorities left for people to associate without official consent.
Since this space was relatively broad, the practice of free social association  in political clubs. The movement was inspired by the Lockean idea, made popular through the spectatorial press, that people will improve in knowledge, reason and virtue through interchange and cooperation. If people were willing to encourage, to educate and to correct one another, sociability would advance civilization. 32 Under certain conditions, women too could partake in sociability. 33 As all these societies drew up bye-laws and ardently enforced these, membership was also an exercise in discipline and responsibility.
Enlightened sociability spread with the popularity of the Spectatortype of weekly or fortnightly periodicals that started in England in the early eighteenth century, and was soon adopted on the Continent, mainly in German cities and in the Netherlands. More than seventy Dutch titles are on record, published in the course of half a century. The most successful such 'spectators' sold a few hundred -in some cases even a few thousand -copies, but their readership was considerably larger, as they were frequently reprinted and circulated around reading societies and coffee houses. Together, these periodicals created a virtual community of readers exchanging practical, religious and moral issues, and assessments of their fellow citizens' manners In combination with the spectatorial press, enlightened sociability  the international relevance of dutch history In the wake of changing French policies since the Napoleonic takeover, however, these democratic experiments were replaced by an increasingly executive rule. French domination brought long-lasting effects such as a unitary state and intensified national feeling; but it also brought an end to a strong sense of political citizenship.

Distant politics, civil society and religion
An  This article set out to argue, firstly, that early-modern urban corporatist society as it operated in the Dutch Republic may rank as a form of civil society; secondly, that religion, both moderate and zealous, can and did enhance the formation of civil society and democracy; and thirdly, that a strong civil society can eventually impede further development of formal, political democracy. In general, Dutch history appears to constitute a perfect example of the way civil society is conducive to the rise of democracy. It meets four requirements mentioned by Philip Nord in this respect. 69 Nord points to early tolerance on the part of the authorities with regard to social association.
A second precondition would be stable integration of the countryside into